Ancestry.com

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Allow me, Phil

**LINK** : https://www.findmypast.co.uk

Thanks for the info.

MichaelG.

Thank you Peter!

Actually my cousin's wife managed to search back a couple of generations or so, but I don't think she was able to find much more.

The family legend that "our" John Kay was the flying-shuttle's inventor is almost certainly a mix up with a contemporary inventor who happened to have the same name, but we do know a much later Kay established a successful bicycle manufacturing business in Nottingham. A few of his products survive in preservation. So I know from which side of family I inherited the engineering gene!

I think you need a pretty solid family history extending back at least four (i.e, your own Great-Grand) generations before your can start to search reliably, and it seems we lack that.

'

Somewhat at a tangent there are now rather dubious companies who profess to trace your geographical and ethnic history from DNA, but the claim is so weak I for one would not bother. A little arithmetic soon reveals the basic flaw - the 2 is a dear little number but oh, such a powerful exponent!

The man I mentioned, possibly my wife's grandfather, is quite an interesting story. And it's also a good example of being able to ask the right questions.

It all started within the last 10 years. I had long been aware that my father-in-law officially didn't have a father, his mother being single at the time. My brother-in-law said that he thought the missing man was an Arthur Forrest, a painter and decorator who emigrated to America. Talking to my wife, I eventually asked the crucial question: "Who was the man that you called Grandad Jones?" "Oh, he was my grandmother's husband and is not our real grandfather" So from that I started looking at marriage records between a spinster, Jane Copley, and Grandad Jones, only there wasn't one. Turn it round and ask the question who was Jones married to, and the answer came back, Jane Forrest. Which immediately started the old bells ringing. It turned out that Grandmother had two children out of wedlock, neither of whom have a father shown, and that in 1933 she married Richard Forrest 5 weeks after Forrest's first wife died. Forrest himself died 2 years later leaving the widow free to marry Harry Jones.

Of course, since the surname was the same I immediately started looking into Forrest's family, and discovered that he was knocking about Bradford at the time of the two conceptions (1912 & 1914); he was single, possibly a bit of a "lad" as in 1911 he was shown as visiting a woman who he later married in 1916; he'd been in prison three times (with hard labour), had joined the Army in 1915; discharged as unfit for further service in 1918, and as far as I can tell, lived with a Jane Forrest from 1924 to 1931. Given that it's not illegal to use another name as long as it is not for nefarious purposes, it is my belief that Jane Forrest was actually my wifes's grandmother.

I was able to trace his family back through the 1800's and discovered that two branches of his ancestors originated from just south of Lancaster around 1800 or so, whilst another branch originated from around Knaresborough. Given that one of the Lancaster branches appear in various church records, yet in the 1841 Census appear in Bradford, one does wonder how they got to Bradford.

I also discovered that Richard was the second child in that family to bear the name Richard, the first having died at 3 days old. And that exactly the same thing occurred in one of his ancestors back around 1800.

All in all, quite fascinating really. And quite time consuming. As far as generations are concerned, I think we are talking either four or five (without calling up Ancestry and looking at the family tree, I can't be certain).

Peter G. Shaw

ps. Genealogical research sometimes throws up some fascinating facts, eg, it seems that my maternal grandparents were never married. Why? Because grandfather was already married to another woman. Not only that, but he had a son with this woman. Furthermore, it became quite obvious that our mother knew all about this, yet we, her three children, were never told anything, not even a hint about it. Of course, Grandfather was an adulterer, whilst mother, technically at least, was a bastard, ie illegitimate as her parents were not married at the time of her birth.

Family histories are fascinating.

My great-grandfather was a murderer who did away with his uncle and assumed his identity (Davies).

When he died the family tried to register his death, but it seemed he was 'already' long dead, so to speak.

The police came around my grandmother's house, and under the floorboards of his bedroom they found papers relating to his true identity (Groucutt).

This all happened back in the fifties, I think.

The other side of my family can be traced back 400 years to a chap who shared my Dad's name.

There are other stories to be told some day.

Neil